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Leonard Susskind: Are We a Computer Simulation with a Purpose? | AI Podcast Clips

28 Sept 2019 · 0 min

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A short transcript excerpt from a YouTube AI Podcast clip (Leonard Susskind) where two speakers discuss whether science can answer existential questions such as whether an underlying intelligence (or ‘G’-word) or a purpose-driven computer simulation explains reality. One speaker frames the idea (agent/simulation, physical makeup, relation to physics), while the other contends the question is answerable.

What kind of questions can science not currently answer and may never be able to answer?
Yeah. Is there an intelligence out there that underlies the whole thing? You can call them with a G word if you want. I can say, are we a computer simulation with a purpose? Is there an agent, an intelligent agent that underlies or is responsible for the whole thing? Does that intelligent agent satisfy the laws of physics? Does it satisfy the laws of quantum mechanics? Is it made of atoms and molecules? Yeah. There's a lot of questions and I don't see it seems to me a real question.
It's an answerable question.
Well, I don't know if it's answerable. The questions have to be answerable to be real. Some philosophers would say that a question is not a question unless it's answerable. This question doesn't seem to me answerable by any known method, but it seems to me sa.